


Introduction to the Liber Avonis

by Ichiro



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:53:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ichiro/pseuds/Ichiro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Introduction to the Important Text, Liber Avonis</p>
            </blockquote>





	Introduction to the Liber Avonis

 

 

  
**Parergua Refuted**

An Introduction to the Important Text, Liber Avonis

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
**Introduction: a survey of the existentialist position**  
  
A new history of Blake's Seven, and this time from Michael Parergua, extraordinary mister.[1] Everyone thinks they can have a crack.  
  
And, oh dear, some cracks are deeper than others.

  
In essence Parergua's argument is simple. Blake's Seven, by a lucky chance maybe, were the hard point of a determined resistance against the tyrannic but highly competent Federation. They were best placed to strike against this busy enemy through possession of

 

    * the most powerful starship amongst the human stars, which had unmatchable speed and enormous offensive and defensive capabilities;



 

    * teleport, with its unique possibilities for guerilla strikes and planetary interference;



 

    * later, the most powerful computer of that phase of human history, the semi-human Orac with unlimited processing power and a link-in to all other computers.



 

  
In effect, in space rebel terms, they had omnipotence and omniscience, and the most powerful of their potencies was the supercomputer omniscience.  
  
And yet some critics can argue that on the evidence we have they achieved precisely nothing.[2]  
  
To do him credit, this is not Parergua's point. In his version of events, the history of Blake's Seven forms a sort of pyramid, albeit a pyramid with a twisted top, as if caught in a sandstorm for ten generations.[3]  
  
Under the aegis of Welsh mop-top Blake the freedom fighters succeed in ever-increasing measure, starting as resourceless fugitives, progressing through the seizure of Liberator to the great high-point of the journey, control of Orac; then the destruction of Star One and the consequent crippling of the Federation. But something is wrong! There is an external event no one could have predicted - the invasion of our galaxy from something without. It is more creepy than Cally and the Auronar, more alien even than Ultraworld or the weird blue builders of the Liberator: the arrival of shape-changing invaders from Galaxy Five. Star One is destroyed, and with it most of the Federation battlefleet - in defending our galaxy their space power is shattered. The battle should have been won.  
  
Not so, at least not for Blake's Seven. They are split apart. The Federation withdraws to its remaining centres of strength and, apparently without the need for the massive Star One information net, embarks on an aggressive reconquest with the super-drug Pylene-50. If a complete rebellion is the desired aim, the need for action is as great as ever and the scope, with a hundred newly-freed worlds to draw together, is greater still.  
  
Yet for the crew of the Liberator it all goes pear-shaped.  
  
Blake has been lost. Without his driving force and integrity the clear purpose of the crew falls away. Their energy is wasted in marginal raids and the investigation of dangerous space phenomena. Eventually Liberator is thrown away by Avon[4], and after more time is spent equipping a successor the last major act of rebellion is a futile alliance between minor warlords whose self-interest dooms it to failure. All that is left is death. Such at least is the argument of Parergua.  
  
Michael Parergua has evidently not been harmonising with the upper gods.  
  
On a superficial level this argument does seem to have some validity. After all, the Federation is ruined more as a result of the alien invasion than through any doing of Blake's. Nevertheless - he was making hard and effective strikes, as we know from the reputation he built up; his attempts to form substitute governments with internal Federation malcontents must have caused immense hassle and bother; and his dogged pursuit of Control and then Star One were reasonable and effective strategies to destroy the Federation once he found it was too rotten to be reformed. Most of all, we cannot underestimate the example he set with his successes to other resistance leaders. He proved that resistance was worthwhile. It is when he has been lost from the crew that material success seems to elude them. The Federation, though ruined in a space war, nevertheless manages to recover ground at an alarming rate. Liberator is as strong a ship as ever, and from newly freed planets the support it should be able to draw on must have been enormous. Yet its crew achieve nothing except the ship's destruction. Was Blake's conviction so potent? Avon thinks so - he repeatedly makes efforts to find Blake again[5]; indeed, it is his overriding passion to achieve this which leads to the destruction of Liberator. Yes, yes, these are the facts. And therefore, to draw the moral of Parergua's argument, future generations of humanity have been cheated by accident of their chance to be grateful to the freedom-fighter Blake.  
  
 **The limitations of the current field of study**  
  
Well, yes. But this is mechanical history. It is not the full and most important record of the adventures of the Blake rebel band, and it is not the real message of the historical evidence we have before us under the blanket title 'Blake's 7'. To explain what, in my view, that message is we shall have to leave the canonical works of this set of records and cast our nets a little wider.  
  
What do I mean when I talk of the canonical works of this set of records?  
  
The amount of information about the time of Blake is considerable, it is probably fair to say incalculable. Almost every student who has taken a more than casual interest in these matters is able to produce from some secret source one or more documents pretending to relate further events of that time, mostly narrative[6], sometimes a deeper analysis[7]. Many of these are available to the interested collector with a little effort, as in due course they receive circulation. At the time of writing, an increasing amount of material is now available on the internet.[8] Simply speaking, there is a lot of information. But - its distribution is too slight, too chaotic. More, much more, perhaps material of value, will never see the light of day beyond the opening of its collectors' bedroom windows. Much will turn up and then be discarded, or maybe passed amongst a limited group with no exposure to the outside interested world. Even for what is known there is no effort to draw this massive historical or semi-historical corpus together, in scheme of synchronisation which could be used to compare and evaluate it. How can we create an accurate history of this period without method? The answer is that we cannot.  
  
In such a quagmire the only way we can find our feet is to establish a level platform. Any such platform for the study of the time of Blake has to be centred on the fifty-two hour long television features, screened in this country by the BBC, which have come to be known as Blake's 7, a title which with greater or lesser justice has come to be attached to the phenomenon as a whole. THESE RECORDS ARE TRUE. That has to be the starting point of any examination of the Blake phenomenon, and it is not the business of this article to prove it - that has been shown substantially enough elsewhere[9]. It is quite clear that these precious recordings are true and accurate narratives of this period of human history, perhaps, though this has been contested[10], even documentary[11]. Anything that is contained in them or that can reasonably be inferred from them we know historically to have taken place as represented. This is absolutely vital. Besides being the obvious primary source for any serious investigation of the period, they are the only yardsticks we have with which to gauge the trustworthiness of the secondary material. Not only do they provide the essential background to our investigations, they are our sole key to unlocking further truth from the huge range of non-canonical sources at our disposal. (It is to Parergua's credit that he bases his arguments squarely on what he can judge from the fifty-two episodes.) It is only a short stepping stone from acknowledging their primary status to seeing them as the main works in a larger oeuvre - the works which all other evidences seem to reference at some point.  
  
Nevertheless, it is clear that these canonical texts do not in themselves contain everything that we should want. Of course, they are not complete narratives of these turbulent times. Not unnaturally, they concentrate on the most exciting incidents in the career of a gang of rebels[12], leaving out the months of boredom and routine actions which surely must have occurred[13]. However it is not precisely on the highlights and adventures on which history is based. Watching Soolin shoot two Federation warriors tells us nothing about how she behaves with Vila when they are alone and playing chess, nor about the origins of the Pylene-50 drug program. More contentiously, and which is most peculiar, they omit a great deal, that is even for the major events they are incomplete: for example, they do not cover the death and famous funeral of Avon[14] after the unfortunate events on Gauda Prime, whose existence on videotape - if it did indeed occur - would serve to finally discredit an awful lot of the more improbable texts. However illuminating it would be, this is still mere detail and can be patched together from the secondary sources. The more serious count against the canonical works - and the reason for our so great reliance on other material of dodgy reliability - is that for all practical purposes they contain no analysis. Everything is story, story - our view of the future and of the participants who act in it comes only as a succession of events[15], which have no more significant relationship with themselves than that they follow each other, a series of time-travelling happenings as simple as a child's storybook. We can infer much about the societies of the time from the assumptions the characters make and the way they implement their decisions; but a more objective view of the characters and their significance in the greater drama of human destiny is impossible. All we have is soap opera.  
  
If we consider the time as Blake as a period of human history like any other and not, for once, simply as the time when Blake and his followers flourished, it becomes obvious to what extent our knowledge of the period and its meaning for us is bound up with the knowledge of the Blake personalities. Almost all the information we have is in direct connection with these nine or ten core people and their near or distant associates. Why? For the close historians of the period through whose work we must approach it their significance must have been immense! That is why I argue that the canonical works are inadequate, showing as they do only the actions and never the results. If we want to understand this cultlike significance and what it ultimately produced – as it must have produced something, to justify the attention[16] - then we must either exercise our imagination within the context of the canonical works, whose canvas for speculation is so unlimited we could never choose between a hundred different theories; or we must turn to other, more questionable, but more deeply illuminating sources and use the historical knowledge we already have to correctly identify those among them that we are more likely to be able to trust.  
  
 **History as a scalpel to literature**  
  
Given the huge mountain of what we have available, this is not such an easy task. It is not, however, impossible. Among the secondary texts there are three sorts which have value:  
A) true and honest accounts of Blake activity written by participants or eyewitnesses, or secondary accounts and histories compiled from participant or eyewitness accounts. As evidence, these have weight as great as that of the canonical texts themselves[17]  
B) false accounts which nevertheless include trustworthy material as defined in A) or which in some fashion preserve elements of genuine tradition  
C) wholly false accounts whose prejudices and assumptions nevertheless illustrate the concerns those writers felt were appropriate to the period[18], showing what people more directly concerned than ourselves believed to be important in its legacies  
  
With careful study these texts will pass on their valuable information with a greater or lesser degree of distortion. Of course, as time passes and traditions become increasingly confused, in different places any one text may include material valuable under all three of the rules described above, or more likely it may simply be valuable for none. How can we tell which texts are which, and which traditions represent historical attitudes and events? That is properly the work of the historical scholar, and the point I am making is that it is his or her work quite as much as covering and re-covering to the point of sickness the already well-researched canonical texts.  
  
For a secondary work which is not of historically reliable provenance we can get trustworthy evidence for true events in a number of ways. Composite narratives are common[19]. These can be recognised by disjunctions of story or hops of style or sense in single texts; separating these out will yield the constituent elements, which may be recognisable or traceable from elsewhere. Comparing disparate texts which have common elements may show up where they have been drawn from the same tradition, a tradition or historical footprint of a genuine event which can then be searched for with some authority in less obvious texts; and eventually from it accurate knowledge of the original event may be pieced together and an incident not recorded in the canon be recreated. Attempting to reconcile the time lines of the more likely pieces will help eliminate those of less trustworthy character by limiting the possible windows where the events they relate can be fitted in. Correct dating of the source material will also assist in eliminating late or obviously derivative documents, but it is rare that the date for any source can be definitely established. What we can do is put trust in material on the grounds of its proximity to the canonical material, where the author is known.[20] (Although this approach is not 100% reliable: witness all the good stuff in the Book of Avon – which clearly contains much you would not want to take at face value – as compared with the notorious recipes in that dodgy cookbook, “Avon A Terrible Aspic”[21], which is lies from beginning to end.) The whole process of historicisation would be hugely aided by a massive anthology or database of all Blake material, which could then be voice-queried by qualified researchers wearing the appropriate apparel.[22]  
  
The important thing to remember is that these works should be judged on the basis of their historical value, not on grounds of literary merit or entertainment. Most important of all, a piece cannot be taken as accurate simply because it seems to be accurate. The most realistic prose accounts are likely – though are not necessarily – to be the ones most recreated and completely created by the imaginations and romantic sensibilities of their authors. On the other hand, a crude piece of sensationalism may be the result of an incompetent artist being deeply struck by some famous episode in the Blake adventures that we know nothing about, and seeking to publicise it simply as best they can. In this case a text’s relative lack of development is a stronger argument for its being direct from truth; if, that is, it is not completely made up. With material that seems less obvious in intention, the questions become more complex. With any piece of historical evidence, the researcher needs to decide not only, what authority does it draw on? but also - why was it written down? What were the aims of the author? What did they hope to gain? Satisfactorily answering these questions will go a long way towards explaining the form the piece takes, and enabling us to recognise whatever is in it which may be of value, with whatever flourishes the author put in to bend the material to their own points removed.  
  
 **Liber Avonis – the case for the future**  
  
It is in this context that we come to the Liber Avonis, also sometimes found described as the Book of Avon.[23] At this point a brief description of this text, or collection of texts, is in order. There are three known redactions of the Liber Avonis - the White Book[24], the Red Book and the Black Book of Wolverhampton. The White Book is the most commonly available and apparently the oldest text.[25] The Black Book is exceedingly rare, indeed there is thought to be only one copy in existence, privately printed for an American collector, and for this reason it has not come under the same level of scrutiny - indeed, even its contents list is uncertain.[26] As the most freely available, it is the White Book I shall describe here. The Liber Avonis is a collection of stories and dialogues relating further adventures and sayings in the life of Avon and in the lives of other persons with whom he is historically known to have been associated, ie the Blake's crew of the Liberator. Most of the texts are related to each other and some are contradictory, for example the multiple deaths of Vila, which disagree both with each other and, according to the best interpretation of events, with the historical death of Vila related in the canonical texts.[27] Most are dialogues with only brief descriptions of settings and chronology. Many are clearly fabulous. Some, including the longest text 'Heat' are incomplete.[28] In such a diverse collection it is hard to discern principles of organisation apart from the compiler's device of splitting one of the longest dialogues into four and including the other texts between those four sections. It has been argued[29] that these four acts should be taken as symbols of the four pink pillars at the end of the universe, beyond which Avon is trying to leap. If so, it will be seen that as far as the Liber Avonis is concerned he fails on the final hurdle.  
  
The importance of the Liber Avonis in this field of study is that it is probably the only known non- canonical work to address exactly the questions which remain clearest in the mind after a study of the known true material[30], and exactly the questions which Michael Parergua has ignored completely in his book. The fact that in doing so it raises far more questions than it sheds light on should in no way make us feel that as a source it is perplexing rather than useful. At least from its study we have become more informed about the sorts of questions we must ask. From this text, as from no other, we may get some clue towards: what was the society from which Blake came? what was his rebellion trying to do? and, the most important of all, the one which gives the others their force and is finally the point of the study of this period of history - what are the adventures of the crew of Blake's 7 tending towards? If they really are the random happenings in the lives of space rebels (freedom fighters, guerilla terrorists etc) then the study of these future events is of no greater benefit than the study of any other period of history, indeed rather less interesting because of the lack of social context into which the adventures can safely be put. Instead of exciting ourselves with space piracy we might more profitably turn our time to the detailed study of interesting documentaries on the Glorious Revolution or the American Civil War, and derive satisfaction from increasing our understanding of the events which have helped to shape our own time.  
  
Past history has its own romance, a call too vast to be wholly heard: it shouts the endless succession of peoples’ lives, generation after generation of similar people living, having their say, saying the same things as us, and then going on to die, and this as they invented new fashions for themselves and new ways of ganging up, of murdering, of travelling, of celebrating. The modulations of the actions of so many people like you and me, which occur over such vast distances of time, are called history. **The past is the unimaginable empty tail on the tiny crawling dog of the present.** The history of the future is a contrast. It too chimes an inexpressible chord[31], a sort of desire, as if into our own hearts there was a little tear where the void inside is bursting, and that void like space contained all the galaxies and stars: desire for the peculiar clothes of the future, the extreme personalities, the life of relevance and danger. All these things, in contrast to the history of the past, are fixed and seizeable, and very in-your-face. It is easy to appreciate what a repressive fascist might mean to us when we can see its representatives drug planets into submission, and it is good to think that the heroes which are presented to us and are thus by implication our heroes run around doing something about this. We watch them, therefore we are on their side; and by extension, were we alive so far forward into the future, we too would be doing the decent thing and running the rebel routes with Blake. Moreover, future history is so immediate and so easily grasped. Our brains are far more capable than grasping the limited rules of Avon’s dress code than the provisions of some past-historical treaty composed by hundreds of men; and, since treaties and wars in past history have equal weight with Avon’s costumes in the future, ie they both feature in their respective spheres in roughly the same degree of prominence relative to the other details with which they share the stage, it is no wonder it should be more attractive to us to master and really get to know Avon’s dozen or so different suits instead of even a section of all the different wars available.  
  
To state it in these terms, however, makes it sound like the attraction of future epic is merely due to the speed with which it can be rote-learnt. Clearly that is insultingly simplistic. But what else does it have to offer us beyond a few easily mastered costumes, some characters we can get to know quite quickly, a bit of shooting and the odd technological twist. Moreover, on the evidence of the canonical exploits, in the words of Parergua, “They don’t get anywhere and we don’t need to know about them.”[32] All the energies of future history are focussed on a grubby sideshow. This attraction, surely, would not exist if the legend were without substance? if the deeds of Avon had no pattern and tended towards nothing? That is where the Liber Avonis saves us from the nihilism of taking it as pure entertainment. For it is clearly not a book of adventure but a religious book.  
  
 **Perception of space opera as a religious movement**  
  
When I say that the Liber Avonis is a religious book, I mean that it is a collection of holy texts whose object of veneration is the man Avon. This is the only explanation for its otherwise confusing jumble of contradictory and fabular texts, and the inclusion of meaningless genealogies and outright lies[33] next to material of a much more probable character. It will be noted that it is repeatedly Avon who intervenes to save the crew, or whose actions put them into unnecessary peril[34]; either way, he propels events. It is he who points out the flaws in half-baked plans or who comes up with the rescue attempts. It is he whose death is significant, notwithstanding the various Death of Vila texts which choke up the earlier chapters.[35] To the compilers the man Avon was something more: also the physical incarnation of some kind of demiurge, the one competent man who is also doomed to sacrifice and failure. It is unfortunately not clear in what way the divine essence is supposed to be enacting with the physical universe. Most of the Avon texts are obsessed with his power and competence[36] or with his death. In the end, whether he died trying to give his personal loyalty to a higher cause, the only thing he could still trust, and seeing himself betrayed (as he thought) by that cause, or whether he died as a martyr to himself under an electric hairdryer on some desert world, his sacrifice is clearly the culmination of - what?  
  
It is a commonplace of the study of the canonical works that they are littered with attempts at the next stage of human evolution: the artificial Decimas[37] and the Bucol 2 aliens[38], the accelerated Links of Terminus[39], most radical of all, the machine society intended by the Muller robot[40] and which, given Ensor's legacy, is clearly in one form or another shortly to come about. These are not the only examples. Even on the most immediate level the canonical texts narrate the continuing battle between whatever it is the Blake crew wish to install as a government and the growth of the reactionary Federation. At this period of human history the old methods are outworn and corrupt. Everywhere events are clearly tending towards a new life; more, a new form of life[41]. And yet the situation is never resolved - everything boils down to a political shoot-out on a minor frontier world. Evidently the human galaxy is trying to attain critical mass for the next great spring. The canonical works leave us frustrated. In this case, the Liber Avonis is the apocrypha to the Old Testament of TV - stories we cannot as yet prove to be true, but which by their accretion to the more important legends illuminate the way in which those events were seen at the time of their occurrence and how we should be expected to approach them without distorting their message.  
  
On the historical facts of the TV series the LIBER AVONIS or ‘AvonBook’ or ‘Liver of Avon’ is an essential commentary of distorted legends and inspired creations.  
  
 **Summary: the myth's relationship with today**  
  
The persistence in differing forms of the same legends attaching themselves to the future Blake histories are proof that not all the stories have been told. The recurring myth of the involvement of the Daleks is one example of this, or the dark legends about Avon's romantic involvement with Cally or with Soolin. To do as Parergua does, and restrict yourself to what you can be sure of is superficially excusable but in actual fact lazy, and results in an incomplete work of scholarship which does not tell us any more than we could have worked out for ourselves.  
  
What we need now is a recognition by scholars of this time that they have been short-changed for too long, and a concerted effort towards the collection and indexing of all sub-canonical literature into an encyclopedia or similar anthology of variorum myths and stories, with a stern examination of their sources and integrity. Only then will it be possible to build upon the bedrock of fact that already exists and increase our knowledge of the religious calamity that was surely coming in the future. And once we have separated fact from fancy, as a side benefit we will understand far better how the fancies came to exist and to have filled out so mighty a corpus. Correct examination of the recurrent myths that cling around Avon will explain why he meant so much to the creators of those myths, and by extension what he means to us. Due to its position as the religious book of the Avon cult, in any such examination the Liber Avonis must be a starting point.

 

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  
[1] _Blake's Seven free my Lovely Pants; a cyclostyled digest of future history, M Parergua, HarperCollins 1997._  
  
[2] _Blake: what a Twit, Sergei Astrakhan, Poldova Publishing 1943_  
 _Blake was not my Hero, Larry "Lamb" Saunders, private publication, 1984, 1985, 1988._  
  
[3] '"They've shot the nose off our ship!" someone called.'  _Dune, Frank Herbert, Victor Gollancz (English publication) 1966._  
  
[4] 'Also feeling the results of Avon's failures and recklessness, the rest of the crew start the search for a way off the planet Terminal.' _Terry Nation's Blake's 7 The Programme Guide, Tony Attwood, Target 1983._  
  
[5] C13, D13.  From now on, such references refer to specific episodes of the canonical works of the histories, according to the BBC listing explained in _Terry Nation's Blake's 7 The Programme Guide, Tony Attwood, Target 1983._  
  
[6] A typical example: 'For All the Wrong Reasons' _Pickled In Time 3, ed & pub Liam PD Brison 1994.  _Sadly, its pornographic nature is also typical of much of this apocryphal material.  Without clear proof or reasoned argument this is more likely to be a wish-fulfilment adaptation of the true events and not stuff on which solid history can be based.  
  
[7] eg 'The Official Avon Watchers' Guide to Blake's 7' _Pickled In Time 3, ed & pub Liam PD Brison 1994._  
  
[8] [Avon_in_Trousers@holland.att.wing.dodgy.fan.trousers](mailto:Avon_in_Trousers@holland.att.wing.dodgy.fan.trousers)  
  
[9] The range of proof is endless.  See this author's seminal _Blake's 7 is Completely True, Cambridge University Press 1993_ and _A History of Unpublished Truths about the marvellous Blake's 7_ , unpublished degree thesis in the Cambridge University Library.  Also _100 True Blake's 7 Facts 'Wizzo', ed & pub Wizzo_ date unknown; _Terry Nation's Dan Dare's Every Boy's Book of the Future, anon, Hulton Press 1956_ ; _Investigations into the Presumed Doubt of the Relations of our Future Selves, Darrow, P, Oxford University Press 1902_ \- fundamental but formidable.  And many others.  However, the greatest earnest of the proof of these records lies not in the callow arguments of scholars but in the minds and hearts of their dedicated fans across the globe and in the conviction which only the word made manifest can inspire.  In effect, proof is not needed, any more than for gravity or the coming of the spring.  
  
[10] _We have never seen the True Face of Blake,  Professor Marcus Lowry, Bart,_ article in _History Tomorrow 187, 1972._  
  
[11] If they are not documentary, they are something very like.  All secondary sources agree on the details and appearances which are abundantly clear from the TV series.  Eg  'Avon lifted an eyebrow, as if it pained him to state so obvious a fact.  Behind that lean, sardonic, rather brutal face it was impossible to know whether he felt alarmed or even remotely concerned that the rest of the crew might be in mortal danger.'  _Terry Nation's Blake's 7 Scorpio Attack, T Hoyle, Citadel Press 1988_ ('Based on the great TV series').  
'Only Avon gave the impression of being unconcerned.  His heavily lidded eyes and slightly contemptuous expression were meant to convey an absence of emotion that was akin to the machine intelligence of the computers he understood so well.' _Terry Nation's Blake's 7 Project Avalon, T Hoyle, Citadel Press 1988_.  Of course, there is an obvious danger here.  We must beware of putting ourselves in the position where we are using the secondary sources to justify the canonical works, and then drawing details from the canonical works to judge the historicity of the secondary sources.  
  
[12] 'T.V. Sci-Fi is about fifty years behind its written counterpart.  Where S.F. was in 1920, TV SF was in about 1970.  As with the literature, though, there are nuggets in the dross like QUATERMASS and, of course, DOCTOR WHO (Eh? - Ed.) [sic].  That's why those are the programmes I like.  TREK, BLAKES 7, et bleeding cetra [sic], are 1920's style macho morons with guns.'  _Reel Sci-fi?, Alex Sarll, Thermal Lance 22, Sentinel 1994._  
  
[13] It has been calculated that the career of the Blake band from their accidental takeover of the Liberator, which may be said to make the start of their activities as effective rebels, to the final destruction of the group on Gauda Prime, lasts about seven years.  For only two of those years the group was under the domination of Avon.  Source: _Time and Space Distort, Professor Marcus Lowry, article in History Tomorrow 169, 1967._  
  
[14] Any student wishing to cover the two sides of this question should consult, for the pro-life argument, _Blood Eyes in Anacreon, T Lee, Harper Collins 1989_ ; and the most cogently argued case for the death cult, _Avon's Guts on a Pole, Professor Marcus Lowry, Vespa 1985._  
  
[15] In some cases it can be shown that events are missing, eg the end of C7 where the entire Liberator crew burst out laughing for no apparent reason.  The only previous speech is a sober comment by Avon on the future of Cally's people.  Clearly between the event itself and our record’s current edition an amusing joke has been removed.  It is important to remember that while the canonical works are history, their editing is a historical act of which we must be deeply suspicious.   
  
[16] See _NazionalSozialismus mit Gunschaft und Rocket, E Ludwig, Goldmann 1913_ for the interesting theories that in fact the Blake rebels were a sideshow and the future belonged to a claustrophobic but ultimately benevolent Federation.  Under this model their significance was purely cultural and romantic, and accounts of their adventures parallel the post-medieval development of ballads and chapbook adventures of the fictional thief Robin Hood.  
  
[17] These days no scholar would deny highest place to the various Hoyle Chronicles or to the _Marvel Blake’s 7 Poster Magazine._  
  
[18] For example, the innumerable stories of Avon’s survival of the Gauda Prime massacre, demonstrating the incredible faith people had in the man long after his death.  The prolificity of this class of apocryphal material is a useful argument for accepting a much more historically well-founded class of text: those treating Avon as the scientific Messiah for which humanity was readying itself.  
  
[19] It is often the case that a prose account will include several pages of alleged verbatim conversation between heroes and an analysis of their emotional states, and then wind up with a sudden act of violence or some similar physical exploit on the part of the rebel crew or agents of the Federation directed against the rebel crew, causing them to suffer.  Cf _Attack of the Nargoids; Blake in Space; A Song for Avon,_ all _Beesley, H, Blake for Blokes 5, 1994._ In stories of this nature the final action-resolution often has only the most cursory connection to the previous conversations.  The assumption is that elements of two separate traditions, perhaps a diary or a moral lesson based on exemplary characters on the one hand and on the other a battle list, are being conflated to create new stories of a type more likely to seem documentary accounts of actual events.  Why anyone should wish to do this is a question examined later in this article.  
>[20] See note 17.  
  
[21] _Avon A Terrible Aspic, P Furrow, Orbit 1991._  
  
[22] AO3.  
  
[23] This usage is more common in studies published before around 1965.  
  
[24] This edition.  
  
[25] _A Synchronising History of Future History Professor D McClure_ , in _Housewife's Favourite 44, 1989_.  
  
[26] It is thought however to contain a complete version of that vicious work, Blood on Avon's Claw.  
  
[27] D13.  
  
[28] At least, as presented in the White Book.  It is not clear why whoever originally compiled the White Book should not have included the complete text of Heat.  Unless it could be shown that he or she was only in possession of a partial copy for some reason, the obvious inference is that it was incomplete because unfinished at the time of the redaction of the White Book.  This would make the dating of the redaction of the White Book and the composition of the poetic work Heat roughly identical.  See D McClure (above, 17), Nation (above, 9) et al.  
  
[29] _Blood on Satan's Claw H Gingold, Harper Collins 1984_.  
  
[30] It even provides clues to the vexed question of Avon's death on Gauda Prime.  
  
[31] It is a romance captured for even the hardest heart in the beautiful words which accompany the Blake's 7 ballad:  
  
 _introduction_  
Oomp, get your anoraks on  
Anoraks anoraks anoraks  
  
Oomp, get your anoraks on  
Anoraks anoraks anoraks  
  
Oomp, get your anoraks on  
Oomp, get your anoraks on  
  
 _main theme_  
Anoraks on, get your anoraks on  
Anoraks on, get your anoraks on  
Anoraks on, get your anoraks on  
Anoraks on, get your anoraks on, oh get them on  
  
 _coda_  
Anoraks, anoraks  
Anoraks anoraks anoraks  
Up against the wall, you swi-i-i-ine  
  
(Source: _Percy's Scottish Ballads, traditional._ )  
  
[32] Page 47, _Blake's Seven free my Lovely Pants,_ cf note 1.  
  
[33] Though given that canonical history stops with the apparent death of Avon, we have no historical record of the events of the religious climax which the Liber Avonis makes clear to have happened, and so there is no way of telling how far even the most unlikely religious stories may or may not be true!  
  
[34] Cf Heat.  
  
[35] Even this can be seen as a sign of the pre-eminence of the Avon cult, if the common perception of Vila as his master’s poodle was one shared by the redactor of the volume.  
  
[36] It is clear that in the sadly incomplete Heat (current volume) Avon has become rabid for a millenial source of power whose significance is lost on the other characters of the story.  
  
[37] A5.  
  
[38] D6.  
  
[39] C13.  
  
[40] D5.  
  
[41] It has been suggested that one reason for the Avon crew's lack of anti-Federation achievement is perhaps that they have become no longer political rebels but social ones, ie their enemy is no longer the political force of the Federation because it is more or less immaterial who rules humanity.  Their rebellion has become its own act, and their rejection of human society a private quest for new horizons.  However, most scholars agree that this is an overstatement.  Whatever his failings, Avon is clearly still trying to follow Blake's plan, and the ultimate aim of the group is repeatedly stated as the destruction of the Federation.  Cf the attempt at a political alliance in D12.  
  
A concise exploration of this argument can be found in _Seven Types of Amphetamines R Marshe, Hodder & Stoughton 1969_.


End file.
